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CHARLES W. ELIOT 

PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




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CHARLES W. ELIOT 

PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
(MAY 19, 1869 — MAY 19, 1909) 



BY 

DR. EUGEN KUEHNEMANN 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY 
OF BRESLAU 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

MDCCCCIX 






COPYRIGHT 1909 BY EUGEN KUEHNEMANW 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published May, 1909 



LiBRAHY of CONGRESS 

Two Onoi':'; ri;c:'"'ec1 

MAY 17 19U9 

... Copyritnt .'-atrv a 

^ if, /id 9 



AS THE FAITHFUL COMRADE 

IN OUR AMERICAN CAMPAIGN 

I GRATEFULLY DEDICATE 

THESE PAGES 



NOTE. 

This essay was originally written for the Deutsche 
Rundschau of Berlin, and will appear in its May and 
June numbers as an homage of Germany to President Eliot 
on his retirement from office and at the same time to 
America in the person of her representative educator. 
The translation is by my dear friend Dr. A. W. Boesche, 
Instructor in German at Harvard University, whom I 
wish to thank for his kind help and cooperation, not only 
in this translation, but also in my university work at 
Harvard. Twice during the last three years, in 1906- 
1907 and 1908-1909, 1 have had the honor of holding the 
post of German interchange professor at Harvard Uni- 
versity. Hence this little essay should be regarded as 
a fruit of the intellectuul exchange movement between 
Germany and America. It claims to be no m^re than a 
Tnodest expression of the sincere striving for mutual 
understanding which we hope will bring good to both 
nations. 

E. K. 
Cambridge, AtptU 21, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 1 

I. THE UNIVERSITY AT THE TIME OF ELIOT'S 

INAUGURATION 5 

II. THE COLLEGE UNDER ELIOT'S ADRHNISTRA- 

TION 10 

III. THE PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS UNDER ELIOT'S 

ADMINISTRATION 16 

IV. ELIOT'S EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY 33 

V. ELIOT'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY (The Ideai^ of 

American Democracy) 60 

VI. ELIOT'S LIFE, PUBLIC ACTIVITIES, PERSON- 
ALITY 72 



CHARLES W. ELIOT, PRESIDENT OF 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Hardly had the excitement of last year's 
presidential campaign subsided, when the 
attention of the whole country was again 
aroused by the news that Charles W. Eliot, 
President of Harvard University, would re- 
sign his office in May, 1909, two score years 
after he was called to the head of America's 
oldest university. It is not too much to say 
that his resignation impressed not only the 
educated circles of New England, but those 
of the whole country, fully as much as the 
important political event. Indeed there were 
not a few in whose estimation the impending 
change at Harvard outranked in importance 
that at Washington. Since Eliot entered upon 
his office, the United States has had eight presi- 
dents. Harvard retained its great administra- 
tor, and, being the oldest and most prominent 

[1] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

college in the land, became through him the 
leading university in America. 

This implies more under American condi- 
tions than it would mean in Germany. Amer- 
ica had no traditions to give the term university 
a perfectly fixed and clear meaning, suggest- 
ing the more or less complete fulfilment of 
duties recognized and undisputed in them- 
selves. On the contrary, the whole university 
idea was still to be developed here, not, indeed, 
after some foreign, as, for instance, the German 
pattern, but with careful regard to the special 
needs of America. The American university 
is in the fullest sense of the word a new creation 
which is still in the making. For this very 
reason, however, the development of the new 
university idea became a determining factor 
in the whole educational progress of the coun- 
try. As the creator of Harvard University 
President Eliot became at the same time the 
most influential personality in the whole 
history of American education. The Ameri- 
can people, more perhaps than any other nation 
in the world, are quickened in all strata of 

society by a supreme faith in the importance 

[2] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

and power of education. A truly feverish 
craving for instruction and knowledge animates 
all classes. Education is conceived as the 
most important structural element in the edi- 
fice of democracy. Education and self-edu- 
cation mean the development of self-centring, 
independent personalities, without which free 
institutions cannot endure. Hence education 
is of all the social duties of America the most 
urgent. Not until this is fully understood, 
can the national importance of President 
Eliot's labors be appreciated. While shaping 
and guiding the destinies of Harvard Univer- 
sity, he has always been conscious of being 
at the same time in the service of his people 
and of democracy. In this spirit he has taken 
the widest and most active interest in the great 
public questions of American life. Without 
ever holding public oflSce, as the head of a 
wholly private institution — for such is Har- 
vard in its complete independence of local, 
state or federal authorities — he has for more 
than a generation been a force in the nation's 
life. Again and again one hears or sees him 
characterized in America as " our first private 

[3] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

citizen" or as "our greatest moral force as an 
individuaL " 

The evolution of Harvard University is the 
most important among those chapters of 
American history that have so far received too 
scant attention abroad. The figure of Presi- 
dent Eliot has now, for a long time, belonged 
not to Harvard nor even to New England 
alone, but to his country as a whole. Such a 
man properly challenges the attention of Ger- 
many and of the whole world. 



THE UNIVERSITY AT THE TIME OF ELIOT S 
INAUGURATION 

Charles W. Eliot was 35 years old and Pro- 
fessor of Analytical Chemistry in the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, when the 
Corporation of Harvard University, the govern- 
ing body of that institution, elected him Presi- 
dent. Their choice required confirmation by 
the Board of Overseers, a sort of revisory 
body. This confirmation was at first denied, 
but, when the Corporation stood its ground, 
finally granted. 

The oldest American institution of learning, 
founded in 1636 primarily for the purpose of 
supplying the Colony with thoroughly edu- 
cated ministers of the church, presented in 
1869 an undeveloped and somewhat chaotic 
condition. The college proper, the oldest 
and most important part of the institution, 
was, in every essential feature, a school, of the 
type of the German Gymnasium. As to-day, 

[5] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

its curriculum covered four years. Its entrance 
requirements were decidedly modest. For 
the first two years practically all, for the last 
two about half of the courses of study were 
prescribed. This largely obligatory curricu- 
lum laid the chief stress on Latin, Greek and 
Mathematics, with which a few courses in 
Natural Science were organically coordinated. 
Everything else was as yet in a primitive stage 
of development. Such was the character of an 
institution ranking as the great school of 
general education, of a higher liberal culture, 
the nucleus for the growth of intellectual 
refinement in America. 

Connected with the college was a group of 
special schools for the learned professions, the 
peculiar feature of their interrelation being the 
total lack of organic coherence. To illustrate : 
if one wanted to make of himself a clergyman, 
physician, lawyer or judge, there was no need 
of one's first passing through the college proper. 
The School of Divinity required for admission 
no more than the ordinary high school certi- 
ficate, the value of which we are probably over- 
rating if we compare its holders (at the time of 

[6] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

which we are speaking) to German boys ready 
for the Prima or even only Secunda of the 
German Gymnasium. The Medical School 
exacted practically no entrance qualifications 
at all, and the Law School did not do much 
better, while the various schools of Engineering, 
Practical Chemistry, Mining, etc., dealt with 
this question of admission without uniformity 
or fixed system. The Dental School had a 
hard struggle for existence, while a school for 
Agriculture or a Veterinary College did not 
exist. None of those professional schools gave 
their students much more than a practical drill ; 
they whipped their men into shape for their 
life work by whatever method proved quickest 
and easiest. Such connection as they had with 
one another and with the college was of the 
loosest character; some of them virtually had 
their own government, their own financial ad- 
ministration, and there actually existed a sort 
of personal freedom from responsibility to the 
President. They did not even have the same 
academic year and the same vacations. 

Nothing short of a radical reform could 
mend matters. It was not enough to remodel 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

into one uniform organization all of these 
scattered fragments of wholly heterogeneous 
institutions furnishing everything from a gene- 
ral education to all imaginable varieties of 
professional training. A new spirit had to be 
infused into this new organism. There had 
to be a complete change of methods as well as 
of aims, and, what was still more, a raising 
of the standards of work was imperatively 
needed in all the departments. The easy- 
going pursuit of prescribed courses was to 
give way to real study, determined by the 
student's own resolution and on his own 
responsibility. The drill system with its 
merely practical aims was to be replaced 
by a thoroughly scholarly training befitting 
the dignity and importance of the learned 
professions. 

But the most urgent task was to determine 
the proper relation between general education 
and professional training. Only those pos- 
sessed of a general education, acquired by 
independently chosen study in the college, 
were to be admitted to the professional schools. 
That was the final aim. Truly, the very con- 

[8] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

ception of American education was involved in 
the momentous decision of these questions. 
Nowhere but in a university could they be 
decided, and the university that assumed the 
leadership and created the standard for all 
others, became thereby the embodiment of 
the American conception of education. It 
enthroned ideal in the place of utilitarian con- 
siderations, it aimed at seriousness and depth 
of genuine education independently won in- 
stead of the hurried acquisition of mere prac- 
tical accomplishments. All of this was at- 
tained by just one decisive move: the intro- 
duction into the American university of the 
spirit of true education, of the spirit of liberty 
and independence, in place of the traditional 
routine. Indeed, without this infusion of 
a new spirit, not even an outward unity of 
organization could have been accomplished. 
To carry out the latter required a great admin- 
istrator and organizer, a real statesman of 
education, and to evolve it out of that revolu- 
tion of spirit, method and attitude of which we 
have spoken, called for a statesman of intellec- 
tuality and true culture. 



II 



THE COLLEGE UNDER ELIOT S ADMINIS- 
TRATION 

The whole American university system is, to 
a certain extent, determined by the goal to 
which its courses of study are directed: the 
attainment of certain degrees. Among these 
the degree of Bachelor of Arts stands for 
graduation from the college proper. The 
requirements which any college exacts for 
this degree determine at the same time the 
standard and value of work done by the teach- 
ers as well as students of such college. 

It was here that the entering wedge of the 

whole reform and reorganization could be 

applied. The fundamental idea was, in brief, 

that all the professional schools must, in course 

of time, become schools for graduates only, or 

in other words, they were to grant admission 

only to the possessors of the Bachelor's degree. 

At the same time the requirements for this 

degree were to be raised so as to make its 
[10] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
holders men of unquestionably genuine liberal 
education and exponents of the true spirit of 
scholarship. Naturally, as the college im- 
proved the standard of its final degree, it was 
compelled to raise correspondingly its entrance 
requirements. Thus the reform within the 
university resulted in higher demands upon the 
secondary schools from which the university 
drew its students, and Harvard University 
assumed the leadership in this great upward 
movement of American education. 

The magic stroke which gave new life to the 
college in all its activities was the determined 
extension of the elective system to almost the 
whole list of studies, that is to say, it was left 
to the student to designate the courses he 
desired to pursue. The first determined steps 
toward this radical reform date back as far as 
1865, four years before Eliot's assumption of 
the presidency, but it was he who carried it to 
its utmost consequence. The prescribed curri- 
culum gradually disappeared, except for a few 
hours in the first college year. Manifestly, 
what the change really meant was the transi- 
tion from school instruction to academic study. 
[11] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

The freedom of choice naturally implied a large 
number of subjects to choose from, and this, 
combined with the steady progress of speciali- 
zation, has resulted in a constantly widening 
range of studies, until now the college embraces 
the whole realm of human knowledge except- 
ing only the professional studies, such as Law, 
Theology, Medicine. 

Another consequence of the new system was 
the imperative demand it made for new teach- 
ers. A prescribed curriculum (since it forces 
each of its courses upon the untalented as 
well as upon the specially gifted) must always 
remain more or less elementary. But those 
who are following their particular bent in the 
selection of their studies want to get beyond 
that stage. They want to penetrate beneath 
the mere surface into the very heart of the 
subject. They want to participate in the 
task of investigation. They want to win 
their own point of view by independent 
effort. Hence a constantly growing demand 
upon the methods of instruction. The elec- 
tive system automatically eliminates the mere 

teacher; it inevitably brings to the fore in 
[12] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

every field of study the creative scholar, the 
investigator. 

With like certainty the system reacts upon 
the student. He is no longer a schoolboy; he ^ 
enters upon the higher life of intellectual free- 
men. What gives to all advanced instruction 
its life-blood, is the learner's own interest. 
Now it was left to everybody to turn to those 
things which appealed to his natural inclina- 
tion, or to discover by actual trial the direction 
of his particular talents. This could not but 
result in a higher intensity of intellectual life. 

His greater intellectual independence en- 
dowed the student with a correspondingly 
greater dignity. It was not possible to apply 
to him in his changed condition the same rigid 
and paternalistic discipline as to the former 
schoolboy. Liberty, self-control, self-govern- 
ment were given a freer scope: another point 
of resemblance to the German university 
student. The full and grateful appreciation of 
this change finds its expression in an address 
signed by 9300 Harvard men and presented to 
President Eliot on his seventieth birthday 

(March 20, 1904). We quote the following 
[13] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

passage: "You have held firm from the first 
that teacher and student alike grow strong 
through freedom. Working eagerly with you 
and for you are men whose beliefs, whether in 
education or religion, differ widely from your 
own, yet who know that in speaking out their 
beliefs they are not more loyal to themselves 
than to you. By your faith in a young man's 
use of intellectual and spiritual freedom you 
have given new dignity to the life of the college 
student." 

All of this is bound up with the unrestrained 
liberty of the elective system. It cannot be 
denied that its universal application was not 
wholly without unhealthy consequences, and 
that the objections and misgivings it has 
aroused are not even to-day entirely silenced. 
But the difficulties and criticisms it has to con- 
tend with apply to every system extending 
academic freedom to the choice of studies ; their 
weight will be the greater the less uniformly 
disciplined and prepared the students are at 
the time of their matriculation. Discipline and 
liberty in the realm of education bear to each 

other the relation of premise and conclusion. 
[14] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Hence misgivings will be stronger in a country 
which, in respect to its school-system or sys- 
tems, has not yet ceased to betray its char- 
acter as a land of pioneers. 

So much is certain, however: without that 
basic principle of President Eliot's reforms 
there could have been no progress. For let it 
be remembered that Harvard College, in its 
new liberty and breadth of spirit, became the 
preparatory institution for all higher profes- 
sions. It was here that the future business 
man as well as the prospective physician, 
minister, lawyer, engineer, etc., received the 
fundamental equipment of a broader scholar- 
ship. This, to say the least, opens the way 
toward the attainment of an unusually high 
level of general culture before a man's special 
training for his actual profession sets in. It 
promises an extraordinarily thorough perme- 
ation of all higher professional endeavors with 
the academic spirit. 



Ill 



THE PROFESSIONAL SCHOOLS UNDER ELIOT S 
ADMINISTRATION 

But the development of the professional 
schools and their establishment upon the 
foundation of a completed college course could 
be the result only of long-protracted, patient 
labors, beset, but never discouraged, by fre- 
quent trials and perils. It would take us too 
far ajfield to trace the gradual progress through 
all its successive stages. The aim remained 
throughout the same: a higher standard of 
requirements and of work actually performed, 
the constant enlargement and perfection of the 
curriculum, the introduction of searching ex- 
aminations in place of an easy and practically 
automatic system of credits. To begin with, 
in the college proper the desired higher intel- 
lectual life would have remained without 
incentive or stability, had not the college in 
all of its departments — which in their aggre- 
gate may be roughly compared to the philo- 
[16] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

sophic Fakultdt of a German university — 
made possible the pursuit of strictly scientific, 
independent, special professional studies. So 
far the only degree following that of Bachelor 
of Arts had been that of Master of Arts. This 
higher degree had been conferred, without 
examination or any other test of eligibility, 
upon those graduates of the college, who, after 
the completion of their college course, had 
irreproachably lived in Cambridge for a period 
of three years. This, then, was an extreme 
case of the automatic conferment of honors 
which became impossible with the establish- 
ment of a genuine university, and hence this 
was the first time-honored tradition to fall 
before the attack of the reform movement. 
As early as 1872 the automatic attainment of 
the Master of Arts degree gave way to an 
examination demanding proof of independent 
systematic studies. This, in turn, necessitated 
a more and more complete equipment of the 
department for graduate study, a development 
which, carried on by untiring effort, did not 
pass out of the experimental stage into any- 
thing like a formulated system until the year 
[ 17] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

1890. That year saw the foundation of a 
special Graduate School for Arts and Sciences. 
But, of course, the instructors in this school 
for scholars were, for the larger part, identical 
with those in the college proper, and, as a 
result, instruction within the latter fell more 
and more into the hands of real investigators. 
Hence the erection of a Chinese wall between 
the College and the Graduate School was 
.^ unthinkable from the start. With the excep- 
tion of highly advanced courses for small 
classes of specialists, the Graduate School 
opened its lectures to undergraduates as well. 
This tended to obscure those class-lines which, 
until that time, had been so sharply empha- 
sized by the traditional old college course. 
All the different groups of students were now 
equally benefited by the stimulating and con- 
solidating effect of a common interest in 
scholarly pursuits. 

Equally inevitable was the disappearance of 
those artificial barriers which had so far sur- 
rounded the courses in natural science. These 
had been organized into a separate school 
which exacted but moderate entrance require- 
[ 18] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

ments and conferred the degree of Bachelor of 
Science after only three years of study. Hence 
its degree was rated inferior to that of A.B. 
Its work consisted in a one-sided drill in natural 
science and in technics. To anticipate the 
result of a reorganization not as yet wholly 
concluded : the Lawrence Scientific School will 
disappear as an undergraduate department 
of the university, and will become coordinate 
with the Graduate Schools by exacting the 
same entrance requirements and by applying 
the same high standard to its final degree. 
This, then, will mark but another entrance of 
the spirit of true scholarship into a field so far 
given over to a mere practical training and 
drill. The lines of demarcation between the 
schools will vanish, and every department of 
the university will be open to every student 
under the same conditions. 

As to the professional schools of Medicine, 
Divinity and Law, the ultimate goal has 
already been defined. They too were to be 
changed into schools for graduates only, that is 
to say, they were to presuppose and require 
from their students the previous completion of 
[ 19] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

the college course. We need but remember 
the low grade of their former entrance require- 
ments in order to realize the extraordinary 
advancement and improvement in the char- 
acter of their students. But this was further 
followed in each of these schools by the un- 
ceasing perfection of their own curricula and 
by correspondingly higher exactions for their 
final degree. This particular phase of the 
reform made the very highest demands upon 
the energy and courage of the president, who, 
as must not be forgotten, was, throughout this 
era of internal changes, responsible as well for 
the purely external success and growth of his 
university. In every instance he was faced by 
the problem of completely recasting old forms ; 
it was not the nature but only the extent of 
the task that differed in the several cases. 

Let us now turn to each of the professional 
schools the general development of which has 
just been characterized. We begin with the 
Divinity School. Since 1886 it has been a 
graduate school for students of theology, while 
until that time it had been little more than a 
drill ground for prospective preachers, and of 
[20] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

doubtful value even as such. Now it became 
an academy of research in the extensive field 
of theology, ranking fully as high as any other 
department of the university. On the basis 
of a comprehensive examination it dismisses 
its students, after three years' study, with the 
degree of Bachelor of Divinity. Having form- 
erly been regarded as a strictly Unitarian 
institution, it has now long since surrendered 
its denominational character. Its professors 
may belong to any Protestant church. It has 
become an institution dedicated to the science 
of theology and to unbiased research. 

Nowhere have President Eliot's courageous 
reforms met with a finer reward than in the 
development of the Law School. It meant a 
considerable sacrifice of attendance when this 
institution, formerly little more than a big 
law office, was made over into an advanced 
school of jurisprudence and, after continually 
adding to its entrance requirements, finally, in 
1896, assumed the strict character of a gradu- 
ate school. As such, however, it has not only 
served as a model for the whole country, but 

has now become, even in point of attendance, 
[21] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

one of the strongest departments of the uni- 
versity. A decisive step was that complete 
reform in method of instruction marked by 
the introduction of the so-called case-system, 
an exposition of which hardly lies within the 
scope of this article. The work of the Law 
School covers three years now, instead of the 
former two, and culminates in comprehen- 
sive annual examinations. 

The Medical School, since 1900 open to 
graduates only, has not yet fully recovered 
from the unfavorable reaction of this reform 
upon its attendance. But nowhere has the 
reform of method and management been more 
thoroughgoing, and nowhere was it more 
urgently needed. Its students, after receiving 
in the college their general education and train- 
ing in the natural sciences, have to submit to 
a rigid examination after each year's course. 
The whole instruction which, in the former 
exceedingly easy three years' course, was al- 
most entirely theoretical, now aims to give the 
student, through extensive work in the an- 
atomical institute, in the laboratories and 
clinics, a practical mastery of his science. 
[ 22 ] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

With the four departments we have now dis- 
cussed, corresponding to the four Fakult'dten 
of the German university, the evolution of the 
American university was by no means con- 
cluded. Unlike its German sister, it is an 
organic growth putting forth new shoots in 
constant development. The further extension 
of Harvard University involved in part merely 
the development of institutions already existing, 
but rather indefinable as to their exact charac- 
ter; other branches, however, were of entirely 
new creation. Thus the School of Agriculture, 
called the Bussey Institute, was newly organ- 
ized as an advanced school for specialists in 
Applied Biology and as such became a part 
of the Graduate School of Applied Sciences 
created in 1906. Until that time the technical 
arts had not been given their proper place at 
Harvard. That this defect could be remedied 
was due to a large endowment given for this 
purpose. The Science of Engineering, taking 
this term in its widest sense, has found its 
place in this school of Applied Sciences which, 
again, is open to graduates only. The last 

creation is that of the Graduate School of 
[23 ] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

Business Administration. It is intended as an 
advanced training school for the future leaders 
of American industry and commerce. It like- 
wise exacts the college degree as an entrance 
requirement, that is to say, before its students 
receive their special training in Political Econ- 
omy, Commercial Law, Public Business, etc., 
they have covered what would correspond to 
about two years of study in the philosophic 
Fakult'dt of a German university. In addition 
to those we have mentioned there are some 
smaller institutions connected with Harvard 
University which we will pass by as being of 
less importance. 

Thus then the American university idea 
developed with steadily increasing surety of 
aim. If there had once been justification for 
James Bryce's remark, that Harvard was no 
real university, but only a struggling college 
with uncertain relations to learning and re- 
search, loosely tied to a congeries of professional 
schools, now, certainly, its university character 
was clearly defined. As between the American 
university and the English college there is this 
point of difference, that the former, like the 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

German university, is the home of advanced 
study and investigation, and, as such, a train- 
ing school for the learned professions. On the 
other hand, the American university differs 
from the German university in this, that, unlike 
the latter, it bases its advanced work not on the 
preparation received in secondary schools, but 
on that furnished by the college, which already 
in itself, as a school for *' academic citizens," 
cultivates the university spirit and serves the 
noble purpose of raising its men to the level 
of a truly liberal and general education. The 
professional schools are to receive their stu- 
dents from the college as men of culture and 
are to dismiss them as trained specialists. The 
American university keeps its eyes everywhere 
to meet each newly arising demand of American 
life with a new species of scientifically trained 
men. It must never for a moment forget its 
responsibilities as the recognized home of 
knowledge and culture in a democracy ; it must 
constantly demonstrate its indispensability to 
the intellectual and moral needs of the whole 
nation. 

The work President Eliot set out to do could 

[25] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

not be accomplished by the decrees of an 
absolute monarch. His, on the contrary, was 
the task of incessant, laborious persuasion. 
In true American fashion he relied so much 
upon free and unrestricted discussion as the 
vital element of all constructive work that he 
actually called into life advisory bodies if such 
were lacking in any field of his labors. Thus 
he created the Academic Council, which, in the 
years of contest, comprised the president and 
practically the whole professorial staff of the 
university. By first forming such represen- 
tative bodies as this, he gradually combined the 
living parts of the university in one harmonious 
organism. The Medical School, which had 
been something like a private domain of its 
professors, had to let its whole financial man- 
agement pass into the hands of the corporation, 
the governing body of the university. The Law 
School was given a regular faculty and regular 
faculty-meetings (since September, 1870). The 
separate schools which gradually coalesced with 
the college were, together with the Graduate 
School for Arts and Sciences, put under the 

immediate care of the Faculty of Arts and 
[26] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Sciences. Almost without exception, President 
Eliot has presided over all the faculty meetings 
in the various departments of the university. 
It is in these that educational policies are 
determined. The general administration of 
the university as a whole lies in the hands of 
the Corporation, which, accordingly, we may 
compare to a German Ministry of Education 
(Kultusministerium), with this difference, how- 
ever, that the six members who, in addition 
to the President and the Treasurer of the Uni- 
versity, constitute the corporation, hold their 
positions as posts of honor, without pay. The 
revisory body of Overseers, made up of alumni 
and elected by the alumni of the university, 
does not find its parallel in the German 
university, since the latter does not, like the 
endowed American university, ultimately rely 
for its whole material, intellectual and moral 
progress on the active interest and affection- 
ate attachment of its former students. The 
president of such a university may then be 
said to combine in his person the func- 
tions of the German Kultusminister (secre- 
tary of education) and of the German Rektor, 
[27] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

besides being president of all the various 
faculties. 

The remarkable growth of Harvard is evi- 
denced by the constant erection of new 
buildings. Numerous new dormitories were 
necessary to provide accommodations for the in- 
creasing number of students. New homes, 
laboratories, auditoriums, had to be erected for 
the departments of Physics, Modern Lan- 
guages, Philosophy, Architecture, Applied 
Sciences, etc. Some of the latest additions 
are the buildings of the Law School and of 
the Medical School. The latter has now ac- 
tually for the second time in its history moved 
into entirely new quarters. Its recently com- 
pleted buildings, than which Harvard owns 
none more splendid, are perhaps the finest of 
their kind anywhere. Built from top to bottom 
of white marble, glass and steel, they present the 
severe beauty of Greek lines. Another monu- 
mental structure. Memorial Hall, contains the 
assembly-room of the university (Sanders 
Theatre) and an immense dining-room at 
whose tables a large part of the student body 

gather three times a day in pleasant compan- 

[28] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

ionship. Among many other new buildings 
are the gymnasium and the boathouse. The 
older structures have almost all been remodeled 
and enlarged. Such a growth, to be sure^ 
puts the very heaviest strain on the financial 
administration of the university, and, indeed, 
there has been no lack of serious diflBculties. 
For three years in succession, 1903, 1904, 1905, 
the authorities had to struggle with heavy 
deficits. But never for a moment did their 
courage and confidence fail them. It was one 
of the guiding principles of university policy, 
to make every new income immediately fruit- 
ful by the establishment of another chair or 
by some other improvement of the institu- 
tion's equipment. In the very days of gen- 
eral business depression a proclamation of the 
president called upon alumni and friends for 
an urgently-needed contribution of two and 
a half million dollars toward the salary fund 
of the university. Up to the present time 
2,200,000 dollars have already been paid in, 
while 88,000 more have been promised. It was 
during periods of similar difficulties (1900 and 
1904), that the university ventured upon two 
[29] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

such large undertakings as the summer schools 
for the teachers of Cuba and Porto Rico. 
The annual report of the president states with 
absolute frankness the general condition, the 
purposes and the needs of his institution. 
The confidence which such an insight into the 
affairs of the university inspires in the ranks 
of its alumni and friends forms the very best 
appeal to their unwavering, generous support. 
In order to substantiate and complete our 
short history of the growth of Harvard Uni- 
versity, we will now, for a moment, yield in 
good American fashion to the fascination of 
figures and numbers. The total registration 
of students in 1869 was 1043. In the present 
academic year (1908-09) the number is 3918. 
Taking only the college proper, its attendance 
in 1869 was 529 as against 2238 in the present 
year. Of instructors there were 63 in 1869, 
now there are 623. Forty years ago there was 
one teacher to each 16.5 students, while at 
present the proportion is 1 to 6.41. To such 
an extent has instruction been expanded, 
individualized and specialized. The Law 
School had three professors in 1869, now it 
[30] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

has a teaching staff of 16. Incidentally we 
may here note the interesting fact that pre- 
vious to the reform of the Harvard Law School 
no such thing was known in English speaking 
countries as a man's devoting himself exclu- 
sively to the teaching of law as his regular and 
only profession. The Medical School, at the 
former date, had a teaching force of 19. At 
present the faculty alone numbers 56 without 
counting assistants and teaching fellows; with 
these added, the total comes up to 161. The 
Divinity School had four professors, of whom 
two were clergymen. It now has 17 teachers. 
The total number of books in the various 
libraries has risen from 168,000 to 803,800, 
not including pamphlets or maps. A very con- 
servative estimate places the capital invested 
in buildings at seven million dollars. The 
active capital of the university amounted to 
2,257,989 dollars on Aug. 31st, 1869; it has 
grown to 19,892,649 dollars on July 31st, 
1907. For the last twelve years endowments 
and bequests have averaged at least 1,400,000 
dollars annually. The total income in 1869 

was 212,388 dollars, in 1907 it was 1,827,788 
[31] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

dollars, not counting a gift of 165,791 dollars 
for immediate use. It is not without interest 
to note that the total revenues of the athletic 
association of the university amounted in the 
academic year 1907-08 to 127,318 dollars, of 
which 101,227 were expended.* 

^ The most important som-ce of the history of Harvard University 
in the period with which we have concerned ourselves is found in the 
President's annual reports referred to above. At the time of the 25th 
anniversary of President Ehot's assumption of office the Harvard 
Graduates' Magazine, in its second volume, pubUshed an excellent 
article by Professor Dimbar about the development of Harvard during 
the preceding quarter of a century (June number, 1894), with valu- 
able supplementary statements about the Law School and the Medical 
School in particular, and accompanied by most interesting com- 
parative notes by the editor, W. R. Thayer. All of this was reprinted 
by the same pubhcation in its March niunber of the present year with 
an excellent continuation by Prof. F. W. Taussig, which brings the 
history of Harvard under President Eliot's administration down to 
the present time. 



IV 

eliot's educational philosophy 

The creator of this new American university 
has always made it a point to explain and urge 
his ideas and convictions publicly. It is very 
characteristic that by far the larger part of 
Eliot's writings consist of public addresses 
afterwards printed. In a democracy the 
spoken word is the normal means of dissemi- 
nating ideas aiming to influence the whole 
community. In this, then, Eliot's practice is 
typical of republican institutions. Taken as 
a whole his speeches not only give us his pecu- 
liar confession of faith as an educator. They 
discuss the problems of education in their 
intimate relation to American ideals. They 
powerfully champion educational reform as a 
public interest. They reveal throughout a 
mind not so much philosophical as practical. 
They express those convictions which were the 
propelUng force in all of Eliot's organizing 
labors. Hence it is but natural that first 
[33] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

among his writings come his essays on edu- 
cational reform, that these are followed by a 
volume setting forth the ideals of American 
democracy, and that the book on university 
administration, representing, as it were, the 
final yield of wisdom gathered from the fields of 
his long labors, concludes for the present 
Eliot's career as an author. 

The inaugural address of the young presi- 
dent in 1869 contains the program of his life. 
It voices a will determined upon a general 
reform of education, which, in America and 
England, it declares to be centuries behind the 
precepts of the best pedagogic thinkers. The 
question is not what to teach but how to teach. 
" With good methods we may confidently hope 
to give young men of twenty-five an accurate 
general knowledge of all the main subjects of 
human interest, besides a minute and thorough 
knowledge of the one subject which each may 
select as his principal occupation in life. To 
think this impossible is to despair of man- 
kind.'* Without such an education there can 
be no such thing as an intelligent public opin- 
ion, the one indispensable condition of social 
[34] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

progress. What we must aim at is the incul- 
cation of that right mental discipline which is 
the very essence of education and which 
expresses itself in keen observation, correct 
induction, sober imagination, unbiased and 
sane judgment. Science, in its origin, its 
acquisition and application, depends on the 
development of these faculties and not on the 
mere absorption of information. " The worthy- 
fruit of academic culture is an open mind trained 
to careful thinking, instructed in the methods 
of philosophic investigation, acquainted in a 
general way with the accumulated thought of 
past generations, and penetrated with humility. 
It is thus that the university in our day serves 
Christ and the Church." 

We have to break down the narrow walls of 
the traditional college and open to the student 
the realm of human knowledge in all of its 
variety. That means that the spirit of liberty 
must enter into his schooling. To do one's 
work under one's own and free responsibility 
is at the same time the best school of character. 
"The best means to put boyishness to shame 

is to foster scholarship and manliness." 
[35] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

The university ought to be the teaching 
place for all worthy youths and particularly 
for those among them that are poor. "What 
greater privilege than this of giving young 
men of promise the coveted means of intel- 
lectual growth and freedom? The angels of 
heaven might envy mortals so fine a luxury." 
"Thanks to the beneficent mysteries of heredi- 
tary transmission no capital earns such inter- 
est as personal culture." In golden words 
Eliot praises the value of the poor men of 
learning to the life of the whole community. 
"The poverty of scholars is of inestimable 
worth in this money-getting nation. It main- 
tains the true standards of virtue and honor. 
The poor friars, not the bishops, saved the 
Church. The poor scholars and preachers of 
duty defend the modern community against its 
own material prosperity. Luxury and learn- 
ing are ill bed-fellows." "Inherited wealth is 
an unmitigated curse when divorced from 
culture." 

The young men trained in the university 

are to build up the aristocracy of America, 

not a stupid and pretentious caste founded on 
[36] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

wealth and birth and on the aping of European 
manners, but "the aristocracy which excels 
in manly sports, carries off the honors and 
prizes of the learned professions, and bears 
itself with distinction in all fields of intellectual 
labor and conduct: the aristocracy which in 
peace stands firmest for the public honor and 
renown, and in war rides first into the murder- 
ous thickets." 

The address formulates the duty of all 
members of the university, of the various 
faculties as well as of the corporation and the 
president. But what is essential in all things 
is the breath of freedom, the absence of all 
narrowing limits of sect or politics. "An 
atmosphere of intellectual freedom is the 
native air of literature and science. This uni- 
versity aspires to serve the nation by training 
men to intellectual honesty and independence 
of mind. The corporation demands of all 
its teachers that they be grave, reverent and 
high-minded, but it leaves them, like their 
pupils, free. A university is built not by a 
sect but by a nation." 

Of that ever active spirit of enterprise 
[37] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

demanded by the task of reform and extension 
he finds the source in the national character: 
it is a spirit which Hkes no prospect so well as 
that of difficulties to be overcome and labors 
to be done in the cause of learning and public 
virtue. This spirit is " the noble quintessence 
of the New England character, that character 
which has made us a free and enlightened 
people; that character which, please God, 
shall yet do a great work in the world for the 
lifting up of humanity." 

The new president does not conceive his 
task as that of an autocrat. '*A university is 
the last place in the world for a dictator. 
Learning is always republican. It has idols, 
but not masters." He conceives the university 
as an institution resting on the support of the 
whole community, upheld by public affection 
and respect. Herself a fostering mother, she 
draws strength and courage from the loyalty 
of her children. He conceives the university 
as serving the interests of the whole people 
through its readiness to attack every fresh 
problem such as the higher cultivation of the 

fine arts; through giving for all that it gets a 
[38] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

rich return of culture, poetry, piety; through 
fostering the sense of public duty, that great 
virtue with which republics stand and fall/ 

It is Eliot's whole life-long way of thinking 
that speaks to us from this inaugural address 
of forty years ago. The goal for which he has 
always striven with unflagging effort is the 
true greatness of his people; never has he set 
up or countenanced false standards of great- 
ness. "The true greatness of states lies not 
in territory, revenue, population, commerce, 
crops or manufactures, but in immaterial or 
spiritual things: in the purity, fortitude and 
uprightness of the people, in the poetry, liter- 
ature, science and art which they give birth 
to, in the moral worth of their history and life. 
With nations as with individuals none but 
moral supremacy is immutable and forever 
beneficent."^ 

The first personal task devolving upon the 
new president now consisted in defining anew 
the idea of liberal culture. The old idea, 

* From Inaugural Address as President of Harvard College, 1869-. 
In Educational Reform, pp. 1 sqq. 

^ From Address at the Inauguration of Daniel C. Gilman, 
1876. (Educational Reform, p. 39.) 

[39] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

which had but Httle use for anything outside of 
Latin, Greek and Mathematics, goes back to 
the Middle Ages or the sixteenth century, 
although, of course, in their present-day treat- 
ment those subjects are thoroughly modern. 
But the introduction of new subjects is una- 
voidable. First of all English must be given 
its place of absolute equality with the ancient 
languages, being, according to Eliot, the lan- 
guage of the greatest of all literatures, and of 
the historically most important of all nations. 
The same position of equality has further to 
be granted to German and French, not for 
reasons of mere practical usefulness but be- 
cause of the greatness of their literatures and 
their indispensability to every advanced student. 
As to history, it certainly should be counted as 
one of the humanities as much as Greek and 
Latin. " If the humanity or liberality of a study 
depends upon its power to enlarge the intel- 
lectual and moral interests of the student, 
quicken his sympathies, impel him to the side 
of truth and virtue, and make him loathe 
falsehood and vice, no study can be more 
humane or liberal than history." Another 
[40] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

subject deserving a place in general education 
is political economy, for which a better name 
would be Science of the Health of Nations. 
It makes great demands on the intellect and 
is not a material or utilitarian subject, for it is 
full of grave moral problems and deals with 
many questions of public honor and duty. 
Last, but not least, we must accord to Natural 
Science equal rank with the other subjects of 
general education, provided it be studied in the 
right way, not merely from books but from 
the things themselves. Indeed, it is the 
*' patient, cautious, sincere, self-directing spirit 
of Natural Science" which is now spreading 
to all the fields of human knowledge, and the 
influence of that spirit upon the shaping of 
modern life is enormous. It is "a study fitted 
to train noble faculties which are not trained 
by the studies now chiefly pursued in youth." 
It makes that "great addition to the enjoy- 
ment of life which results from an early acquain- 
tance and constant intimacy with the wonders 
and beauties of external nature." 

This new definition of the idea of general 

education involves a new curriculum combin- 
[41] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

ing with the minimum of obligatory subjects 
the earhest possible admission of the student 
to courses of his own choice. It further in- 
volves a reform and improvement of teaching 
methods. "The purposed modification of the 
present prescription of Greek and Latin for 
all boys who are to go to college will rid the 
Greek and Latin classes of unwilling and 
uncapable pupils." "The withdrawal of the 
artificial protection now given to the classics 
will cause the study of classical antiquity to 
rely upon a reasonable perception of its proper 
place amongst the studies which belong to a 
liberal education." "The classics, like all 
studies, must stand upon their own merits." 
"The artificial protection becomes impossible 
in universities which have no support from an 
established church or from an aristocratic 
organization of society, and where it would 
be so easy for the generations, if repelled, to 
pass the universities by." Thus the university 
would lose its directive influence upon valuable 
forces, it would be out of harmony with the 
great development of the country and would 

do injury to itself and to the country. 
[42] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
It is in this manner that President Eliot dis- 
cussed, in the year 1884, all of those problems 
which in Germany have led to the abolishment 
of the so-called monopoly of the Gymnasium/ 
With the same breadth of view, keeping his 
eyes on the ever-changing conditions of public 
life, did Eliot approach the principal problems 
of professional training for preachers and 
physicians. How far the old function of the 
American university has been modified, appears 
from the following bit of statistics. The pro- 
portion of clergymen to the whole number of 
graduates between the years 1766 and 1770 
was 29 per cent in Harvard, 32 per cent in 
Yale, 45 per cent in Princeton : while from 1871 
to 1876 it was only 5 per cent in Harvard, 7 per 
cent in Yale and 17 per cent in Princeton. 
The vigorous development of the other learned 
professions has all but wholly deprived the 
preacher of his former privileged position as 
almost the only teacher of the nation. But it is 
especially the modern press that has nowadays 
become the great means of disseminating 
education. In general, the authorities of old 

1 What is a Liberal Education ? 1884, ib. pp. 87 sqq. 
[43] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

are ceasing to be, as the faith in authority 
declines. If there is one thing modern man 
has learned, it is to distrust all ex-cathedra 
teaching. The unquestioning acceptance of 
dogmatic statements has had its day. The 
weight of all authority has greatly diminished, 
and the sources of recognized authority are 
quite different from what they were a century 
ago. All of which has revolutionized the old 
religious views, and here one of the disintegrat- 
ing forces has actually been the change of politi- 
cal convictions. The monarchic conception of 
God as the Lord of Hosts does not appeal to a 
people which sees in " our country," an immeas- 
urably worthier object of devotion than any 
human potentate could be, and a better symbol 
of the infinite God. The welfare of the many 
has come to be recognized as the prime object 
and only legitimate aim of human government. 
The welfare of the elect few has come to be 
repudiated as a purpose of government. Only 
the intimate connection between such political 
convictions and the faith of a people can give 
vitality to its religious life. But the most 

important among all the influences that have 
[ 44 ] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

changed the old religious conceptions is that 
new spirit in dealing with the facts of nature 
that is being developed by our modern Natural 
Science. *'This spirit seeks only the fact with- 
out the slightest regard to consequences: any 
twisting or obscuring of the fact to accommo- 
date it to a pre-conceived theory, hope or wish, 
any tampering with the actual result of investi- 
gation, is the unpardonable sin. It is a spirit 
at once humble and dauntless, patient of 
details, drawing, indeed, no distinction between 
great and small, but only between true and false, 
passionless but energetic, venturing into path- 
less wastes to bring back a fact, caring only for 
truth, candid as a still lake, expectant, un- 
fettered and tireless." " No other method of 
inquiry now commands respect. Even the 
ignorant have learned to despise the process of 
searching for proofs of a foregone conclusion. 
Apologetics have ceased to convince anybody, 
if they ever did." To this new standard of 
intellectual sincerity, of intellectual candor, 
the Protestant theologian and clergyman must 
rise. That standard seems to be wanting 

when one is expected to arrive at results fixed 

[45] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

from the start and to adhere to them for the 
rest of one's Hfe. That diminishes the respect 
for the preaching profession and deters many 
a man of abihty and independence from enter- 
ing it. 

But if this caUing of the preacher is more 
difficult now than before, it has also become 
loftier. To preach to modern man is a task 
more urgent and yielding richer rewards than 
ever. Hence the profession ought to be even 
more attractive now. But to make it so a far 
more perfect training is imperatively needed. 
"Theological study, if it is to be respected by 
laymen, must be absolutely carried on with the 
same freedom for teacher and pupil which is 
enjoyed in other great departments of learn- 
ing." Indeed, in no other field of learning is 
moral and material independence so indis- 
pensable as in this. Support by the funds of 
sectarian societies implies an obligation and 
attracts too many unfit elements. The prep- 
aration of the minister should comprise lan- 
guage courses, English Literature, Psychology, 
Political Economy, History, Natural Science: 
it should find its completion in such more 

[ 46] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

strictly professional studies as Philosophy of 
Religion and Systematic Theology: it should 
acquaint him with modern charitable and 
reformatory methods and prepare him for the 
contest of Christian society with licentiousness, 
intemperance, pauperism and crime. But in 
all of this it should never be forgotten that 
*' the object to be held in view in training a 
young man for the ministry is the imparting 
of power, not of information." "The true 
spirit of research is the same in all fields, 
namely, the free, fair, fearless and faithful 
spirit of modern scientists." Preaching, once, 
before the art of printing, the most important 
task, should now only be a small part of a 
minister's duties: in all of these he should 
enjoy the fullest freedom of development. 
Neither should he be held in abject servitude 
to dogma, nor should he be forced to square 
himself with dogma by means of "creed- 
stretching and creed-blinking." ^ 

Eliot's views about the training of the 
physician again place the strongest emphasis 
on the public duties medicine has to perform. 

* On the Education of Ministers, ib. pp. 59 sqq. 
[47] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

For not only does the remarkable growth of 
this science, the development of so many new 
branches, such as diagnostics, bacteriology, 
aseptics, demand an ever so much more care- 
ful and thorough preparation, but its scope 
of work has been greatly widened by the 
important problems of hygiene, which pre- 
vents disease and creates healthy conditions of 
life for the whole community. To encompass 
this end, medicine has the further duty of 
enlightening the people by public advice and 
precept. The growing importance of medicine 
finds recognition in the increasing supervision 
and actual assumption by the state of medical 
labors. "The times are past when the church 
alone asked men to devote themselves passion- 
ately, disinterestedly and bravely to the service 
of their fellow-men. The medical profession 
now exhibits in highest degree these virtues." 
It is here that modern heroism is found. " Our 
nation sometimes seems tempted to seek in 
war — that stupid and horrible savagery — 
for other greatness than can come from vast 
resources, prosperous industries and extending 

commerce.'* "Would it might turn its ener- 

[48] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

gies and its longing for patriotic and heroic 
emotion into the immense fields of beneficent 
activity which sanitation, preventive medicine 
and comparative medicine offer it. There are 
spiritual and physical triumphs to be won in 
these fields infinitely higher than any which 
war can offer, for they will be triumphs of 
construction and preservation, not of destruc- 
tion and ruin. They will be triumphs of good 
over evil and of happiness over misery." ^ 

The same idea of educating man to the 
service of democracy determines Eliot's views 
about public education in the narrower sense 
of the term. He is constantly looking for the 
organic connection of the whole national 
system of education. The liberally educated, 
professionally trained specialist whom the 
university places at the service of the people 
must have received the right kind of instruction 
from his first day of schooling in order to reach 
his goal and to avoid a senseless waste of time. 
On the other hand, a high development of 
methods of instruction at the university will 
react upon the schools in determining the 

* Medical Education of the Future, ib. pp. 344 sqq. 
[49] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

requirements their graduates have to meet on 
entering the university, for the university is no 
class institution, but one offering the widest 
possible scope of development to every promis- 
ing talent, just as a school is a common teach- 
ing place for all the growing members of 
democracy. "Schools follow universities and 
will be what universities make them." With 
this view toward a uniform, democratic system 
of education, Eliot has always been particularly 
zealous in urging the reform of the public 
school, and has devoted to public school educa- 
tion the larger number of his pedagogic articles. 
These, like Eliot's earlier writings, are 
entirely practical, setting forth definite pro- 
posals for the betterment of instruction in the 
public schools. As before, we turn from this 
purely practical application to the fundamental 
idea itself. Something must be wrong with 
the educational system of the nation, since the 
influx of students into the universities is far 
from keeping pace with the growth of popula- 
tion. According to the best authorities the 
population of the United States increases about 

one-third in every period of ten years, while 
[50] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

(in 1888, when Eliot made this comparison) the 
increase in the number of pupils in the colleges 
during the same period of time was only 23 per 
cent. Public education should not only satisfy 
but direct the needs of the country. Instead 
of that it is actually lagging behind. *' Ob- 
viously there are serious hindrances affecting 
all the institutions"; but "accessibility of 
appropriate opportunity is the essence of 
democratic society." 

The one true end of education should be 
"effective power in action." Hence we should 
not aim exclusively at "the storing up of infor- 
mation or the cultivating of faculties which are 
mainly receptive, discriminating or critical," 
but should develop "personal power in acting 
under responsibility." "The moral purpose 
of a university's policy should be to train young 
men to self-control and self-reliance through 
liberty." 

This purpose necessitates the introduction of 
that elective system which has been discussed. 
The free choice of studies develops all varieties 
of individual talents to the very greatest inten- 
sification of personal power, to thorough ex- 
[51 ] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

pertness of each student in his own field, and it 
engenders respect for such expertness in any 
field. To produce such experts and to instil 
respect for expert judgment is one of the most 
urgent duties of the American university. For 
insufficient appreciation of the value of expert 
labor is one of the worst afflictions of American 
life. 

Now it is this very same spirit that should 
find entrance into the public schools. They, 
too, should turn from the mere cramming of 
memory to the development of intellectual 
self-assertion and spontaneity. "American 
teaching in school and college has been chiefly 
driving and judging : it ought to be teaching and 
inspiring." In view of the greatness of the 
task of education which only the college can 
bring to completion, the preparatory work 
must be both shortened and enriched. This 
is made possible through the improvement of 
method. Hence there need be no fear of over- 
burdening. It is not work that produces 
fatigue, but the want of interest and of conscious 
progress. "The best means to diminish strain 

is to increase interest, attractiveness and the 
[52] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

sense of achievement and growth." " Nothing 
is so fatiguing as dull, hopeless effort, with the 
feeling that, do one's best, one cannot succeed." 
The common type of text-books has just this 
fatal defect : '* a complete lack of human interest 
and the consequent lack in the child of the 
sense of increasing power." "We are coming 
to accept the doctrine that no teaching is good 
which does not awaken interest in the pupil." 
The prevailing school-room ideal of attain- 
ing the greatest possible equality of results 
with all the members of a class is fundamen- 
tally wrong. What gives teaching its greatest 
charm for the teacher is, on the contrary, 
the discovery and recognition of individual 
differences. The pupils should leave the 
class with a greater divergence of achieve- 
ments and interests than that with which 
they entered it. It cannot be our aim to 
sacrifice the best pupils to the poorest. The 
mobility of democratic society demands the 
full development of all individual talents. 
Another mistaken notion presents itself in 
those superfluous examinations compelling the 

pupil to hold in readiness all the knowledge he 
[53] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

has acquired. They aim at something wholly 
artificial; but *'to introduce any artificial 
hardness into the course of training that any 
human being has to follow is an unpardonable 
educational sin." The school should mirror 
life itself in the difficulties with which it con- 
fronts the pupil. *'In education the devel- 
opment and training of motives should be 
consecutive and progressive, not broken and 
disjointed." Herein lies one of the objections 
to whipping. " Permanent motives should be 
relied on from beginning to end of education, 
and this for the simple reason that the forma- 
tion of habits is a great part of education." 
" Prudence, caution, emulation, love of appro- 
bation, — and particularly the approbation of 
persons respected and beloved, — shame, pride, 
self-respect, pleasure in discovery, activity, or 
achievement, delight in beauty, strength, grace 
and grandeur, and the love of power, and of 
possessions as giving power, ... in modera- 
tion, they are all good, and they are available 
from infancy to old age." Lastly, it is the 
duty of the school to attain its intellectual 

results without detriment either to the physical 
[ 54 ] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

development of its students or to their joy in 
their everyday Hfe. Thus "the plain fact is 
that there is community of interests and aims 
among teachers throughout all the grades." 
"I have never yet seen in any college or uni- 
versity a method of instruction which was too 
good for an elementary or secondary school. 
The alert, inspiring, winning, commanding 
teacher is just the same rare and admirable 
person in school and in college." To come up 
to such a standard, to be sure, the teaching 
profession needs both careful training and en- 
lightened public support. Eliot, therefore, as 
the true statesman of education, has never 
failed to advocate with the whole weight of his 
personality the thorough training and testing 
of teachers, long tenure of office, appropriate 
salaries and pensions, indeed, everything assur- 
ing the teaching profession of freedom from 
solicitude, dignity, and public esteem.^ It 

^ Teachers' Tenure of Office, 1879, ib. pp. 49 sqq. Liberty in 
Education, 1885, pp. 125 sqq. Can School Programmes be Shortened 
and Enriched ? 1888, pp. 151 sqq. The Aims of the Higher Educa- 
tion, 1891, pp. 223 sqq. Undesirable and Desirable Uniformity in 
Schools, 1892, pp. 273 sqq. The Grammar School of the Future, 1893, 
pp. 303 sqq. The Unity of Educational Reform, 1894, pp. 315 sqq. 
The Function of Education in Democratic Society, 1897, pp. 401 sqq. 

[55 ] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

was primarily to meet the special needs of 
American teachers that, under his administra- 
tion, Harvard University has out of small 
beginnings developed its exceedingly important 
Summer School of Arts and Sciences. This 
gives to all the teachers in the land the 
unrestricted opportunity to come into touch 
with academic life in America's leading univer- 
sity, and by thus increasing their intellectual 
efficiency as teachers, to contribute materially 
to the gradual uplift of their profession as well 
as of American schools. Since 1874 the total 
attendance at the Summer School has been 
13,414 persons, of whom fully 8784 were 
teachers. 

Thus we see that Eliot's whole thought is 
directed at constructing all the methods of uni- 
versal democratic education. What is needed 
is to permeate the whole people in all its va- 
rious members with the quickening leaven of 
every imaginable variety of education, but, 
at the same time, to train all alike to that way 
of thinking which alone makes democracies 
possible. Now, there is no better means of 

uplifting the democratic masses than the read- 
[56] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

ing of good books, for this continues education 
through self-education. Hence the school 
must implant the taste for good reading. 
"Fifteen minutes a day of good reading would 
have given any one of this multitude a really 
human life. The uplifting of the democratic 
masses depends on this implanting at school 
of the taste for good reading." As already 
pointed out, a further enduring result of the 
training received at school should be, espe- 
cially in democratic communities, and, indeed, 
contrary to a far-spread American tendency, a 
universal ''confidence in experts and willing- 
ness to employ them and abide by their deci- 
sions." But the most important function of 
education in a democracy should be "the firm 
planting in every child's mind of certain great 
truths which lie at the foundation of the 
democratic social theory." These are "the 
intimate dependence of each human individual 
on a multitude of other individuals, which 
increases with civilization and with the develop- 
ment of urban life"; "the obligation of the 
present generation to many former genera- 
tions"; "the essential unity of a democratic 
[57] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

community, in spite of the endless diversities 
of function, capacity and achievement among 
the individuals, the essential unity in aim and 
spirit." Thus we realize "the familiar Chris- 
tian doctrine that service rendered to others 
is the surest source of one's own satisfaction 
and happiness." *'In a democracy the public 
functionary is not a master but a trusted ser- 
vant." "The children should learn that the 
desire to be of great public service is the highest 
of all ambitions." "Since it is a fundamental 
object of a democracy to promote the happiness 
and well-being of the masses of the popidation, 
the democratic school should explicitly teach 
children to see and utilize the means of happi- 
ness which lie about them in the beauties and 
splendors of nature." "The school should 
be the vehicle of daily enjoyment, and the 
teacher should be to the child a minister of 
joy." "It should be a recognized function 
of the democratic school to teach the children 
and their parents how to utilize all accessible 
means of innocent enjoyment." "Finally, the 
democratic school must teach its children what 
the democratic nobility is." It is based on 
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PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

"fidelity to all forms of duty which demand 
courage, self-denial, and zeal, and loyal devo- 
tion to the democratic ideals of freedom, 
serviceableness, unity, toleration, public justice, 
and public joyfulness." "Democratic nobil- 
ity exists and must exist, if democracy is to 
produce the highest types of character " ; it 
exists in "men and women of noble character, 
produced under democratic conditions by the 
combined influences of fine inherited qualities, 
careful education, and rich experience." " Mere 
wealth has no passport to the democratic nobil- 
ity." To attain membership in it is a right- 
ful ambition, but it can be won only through 
high intellectual and moral qualities. These 
assure everybody admission to its ranks. 
"There are, consequently, more real nobles 
under the democratic form of government than 
under any other." ^ 

* See, for this whole chapter, Educaiioiwl Reform, New York, 
The Century Co., 1905. 



ELIOT S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY : THE IDEALS 
OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Thus all the ideas of what we may call 
Eliot's educational philosophy reach out into 
his social philosophy, or, to use a more exact 
term, his philosophy of American democracy. 
A most remarkable thought of his connects the 
Middle Ages with ages still to come. "The 
system of public instruction should embody for 
coming generations all the virtues of the medi- 
eval church. It should stand for the brother- 
hood and unity of all classes and conditions; 
it should exalt the joys of the intellectual life 
above all material delights; and it should pro- 
duce the best constituted and most wisely 
directed intellectual and moral host that the 
world has seen." 

Eliot has the very strongest faith in the 

rationality of democratic tendencies. To be 

sure, in counting up America's contributions 

to the civilization of the world, even such a 

[60] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

man as he betrays a little of that peculiar 
American provincialism which does not always 
justly estimate the achievements of other 
nations and which views some things as strictly 
American, to which other peoples may lay 
claim as well. He sees such contributions first 
in "the advance made in the United States, 
not in theory only, but in practice, toward the 
abandonment of war," and "the substitution 
of discussion and arbitration," second in " the 
thorough acceptance, in theory and practice, of 
the widest religious toleration," third in "the 
safe development of a manhood suffrage 
nearly universal," in the actual governing of 
the state through the votes of its citizens. He 
is not blind to the dangers of party government. 
But how much greater are the educational 
advantages of this institution! It effects 
"the combination of individual freedom with 
social mobility"; "it permits the capable to 
rise through all grades of society"; it creates 
the periodical interest of the voters in the 
discussion of grave public problems; it is of 
benefit even to those who administer the 
government, since they can maintain their 
[61 ] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

superiority, not through the exercise of any 
special privileges, but only through being supe- 
rior; it enables the best citizens to wield far- 
reaching influence even though holding no 
office; it fosters throughout the many layers of 
society the inclination and ability to read good 
books; it inspires a joyful support as does no 
other form of government, and thereby engen- 
ders the strongest spirit of sacrifice. The fourth 
American contribution to civilization is found 
in the "demonstration that people belonging 
to a great variety of races or nations are, under 
favorable circumstances, fit for political free- 
dom," and the fifth is "the diffusion of mate- 
rial well-being among the population." "They 
are all five essentially moral contributions, 
being triumphs of reason, enterprise, courage, 
faith and justice, over passion, selfishness, 
inertness, timidity and distrust." * 

On the same foundation rests the hope that 
the American Republic will not share the fate 
of the republics of the past. *' The mental and 
moral force which makes for the permanence 

* Five American Contributions to Civilization. In American 
Contribviions to Civilization, pp. 1 sqq. 

[62] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

of our institutions is universal education." 
This is an entirely modern principle, standing 
in absolute contrast, for instance, to Plato's 
idea. A further assurance of the permanence 
of the republic lies in the increasing gentleness 
and justice of family life; for "whatever 
regulates wisely the relations of the sexes and 
increases domestic happiness, increases also 
social and governmental stability." Further- 
more, something entirely unknown to former 
ages presents itself in certain means of public 
happiness which have recently been liberally 
provided, at public expense, in many Ameri- 
can communities, such as parks, museums, 
libraries, public sanitation, etc., all of them 
making for the permanence of free institutions. 
"Another new and effective bulwark of state is 
to be found in the extreme publicity with which 
all American activities are carried on." The 
development of the modern corporation teaches 
numberless members of society how to render 
service to a vast, organized whole. The 
extreme division of labor has brought about 
the consciousness of a mutual dependence of 
man on man and of community on community. 
[63] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

Hence "we no longer look on what Is novel 
with suspicion and distrust." "Hope and 
expectation of good spring in our hearts, as 
never before in the hearts of former genera- 
tions." All the old ideas about God, man, 
and the world are given a new direction by 
the abiding faith in a development toward 
better things. Thus "they contribute gen- 
erously to the happiness and true spirituality 
of the people," another source of support for 
governmental stability. Religion itself no 
longer urges upon us the "conciliation of an 
offended God" and "the provision of securities 
for individual happiness in a future life"; its 
province is "to soften and elevate the char- 
acters and lives of men in this world." ^ 

The same confidence in the future of democ- 
racy is commanded by its past showing. In 
each of the three great crises of American 
history — the question of independence of 
Great Britain, the question of forming a firm 
federal union, the question of maintaining that 
union, — "the only wise decision was arrived 

* Some Reasons why the American Republic may endure, ib. pp. 
39 sqq. 

[64] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

at by the multitude." Wonderful results, in 
all the fields of activity, have been obtained by 
voluntary, united effort for intellectual and 
moral ends, such as is seen in the successful 
establishment and support of religious institu- 
tions, in the maintenance, upon a purely 
voluntary system, of institutions like Harvard, 
and in many similar manifestations. We have 
already spoken of that "vast amount of 
intellectual and moral energy" which is trained 
to concerted effort in the service of corporations. 
In the same way "democracy is a training- 
school in which multitudes learn in many ways 
to take thought for others, to exercise public 
functions, and to bear public responsibilities." 
The financial system of America has never 
failed to work well. Nowhere has private 
property been more secure. But democracy 
is also the right soil for cultivating the refine- 
ments of life, for breeding true gentlemen and 
gentlewomen. The effectiveness of a heredi- 
tary transmission of culture through successive 
generations is already apparent in the America 
of to-day. Of far greater importance is the 

continued possibility of full development for 
[65] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

individuals of true innate nobility, and for this 
a mobile democracy furnishes much better 
conditions than the inbreeding which results 
from class differences. "Who has not seen in 
public and in private life American women 
unsurpassed in grace and graciousness, in 
serenity and dignity, in effluent gladness and 
abounding courtesy? Now, the lady is the 
consummate fruit of human society at its 
best. In all the higher walks of American life 
there are men whose bearing and aspect at 
once distinguishes them as gentlemen. They 
have personal force, magnanimity, moderation 
and refinement; they are quick to see and to 
sympathize; they are pure, brave, and firm." 
Such observations make it reasonable "to 
expect that science and literature, music and 
art, and all the finer graces of society will 
develop and thrive in America, as soon as the 
more urgent tasks of subduing a wilderness 
and organizing society upon an untried plan 
are fairly accomplished." ^ 

A cheerful optimism is the wellspring of all 

^ The Working of American Democracy, 1888, ib. pp. 69 sqq. 
Family Stocks in a Democracy, 1890, ib. p. 133. 

[66] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

of these ideas, but it is not the optimism of the 
average American, with its frequent super- 
ficiality and excessive self-confidence. Eliot's 
optimism rests on the consciousness of large 
reserve power and on an unfailing discernment 
of things as they are. He dislikes the morbid 
modern tendency to exaggerate social evils, and 
combats it in a delightful essay in which he 
sets forth the thoroughly healthy and simple 
life of the little community where he has his 
summer home, as typifying the life of from thirty 
to forty million Americans. On the other hand 
he is by no means blind to such shortcomings 
of democracy as have hitherto appeared. He 
has been a zealous advocate of municipal 
reform, recommending the employment of 
experts with long tenure of office instead of 
the constant rotation in office of mere politi- 
cians. Nor does he, the great champion of 
universal education, shut his eyes to the dis- 
appointments with which it has so far been 
attended. For relief from these he relies on 
improved methods, aiming more at developing 
the powers of judgment than at stuffing the 

brain with sterile matter. Nothing can shake 
[67] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

his confidence in democratic principles. But 
these must be correctly understood as making, 
not for mechanical equality, but for the unity 
in spirit of the most diverse individual gifts, 
each of which must be given its own possibility 
of development. This is "the real end to be 
attained in social organization." '* Civiliza- 
tion means infinite differentiation under lib- 
erty." The French ideal, "Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity," must give way to the Anglo-Saxon 
ideal, "Freedom, Unity, Brotherhood." With 
this attainable ideal to point the way, Eliot is 
a preacher of the Happy Life who knows how 
to lead modern men to the sources of happiness. 
These flow more amply for those of simple life 
than for the very rich, who only through loving 
service can find the path to happiness and to 
the kingdom of God upon earth. It is in a pecu- 
liarly fascinating retrospect from his serene, 
wholly sublunary world upon the first begin- 
nings of Puritan society in his beloved New 
England, that this true scion of the Puritans 
points out the complete failure of their hier- 
archy and yet lays grateful stress upon the 

unity of spirit in American history. He 
[68] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

honors those men for that devotion to the 
ideal which makes them the fathers of demo- 
cracy; at the same time he is happy to know that 
their one great object of devotion, the church, 
is in a more natural and secure position to-day 
than ever it was. 

To Eliot all his labors are but one long ser- 
vice to democracy. He has always been found 
at his post when his democratic idea of uni- 
versity development was under attack. When 
hostile legislation threatened to deprive the 
university of its exemption from taxes, he 
entered the lists with a masterful memorial, as 
the champion of his great fundamental ideas: 
the voluntary assumption of public duties, 
which otherwise would fall upon the state, the 
unrestricted encouragement of the joy of 
voluntary giving, the unobstructed develop- 
ment of that public spirit in private citizens 
which is the mainstay of republican institu- 
tions.^ 

^ The Forgotten Millions, 1890, ib. pp. 103 sqq. One Remedy 
for Municipal Misgovernment, 1891, pp. 173 sqq. Wherein Popular 
Education has failed, 1892, pp. 203 sqq. Equahty in a Republic. 
1896, pp. 161 sqq. The Happy Life, 1895, pp. 245 sqq. Present 
Disadvantages of Rich Men, 1893, pp. 291 sqq. Why We Honor the 

[69] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

Thus our discussion of Eliot's labors con- 
tinually brings us back to his beloved univer- 
sity, which is, after all, the one great achieve- 
ment of his life. All of his extensive public 
activity and social thought finds its explana- 
tion in this, that the President of Harvard 
University is, and must be, in the fullest sense 
of the term, a man in public life. The con- 
clusion of the last book that has so far issued 
from Eliot's pen summarizes the functions and 
purposes of such a university as he has created. 
We quote his words as a fitting close to our 
present chapter: "Any one who makes himself 
familiar with all the branches of university 
administration in its numerous departments of 
teaching, in its financial and maintenance 
departments, its museums, laboratories, and 
libraries, in its extensive grounds and numer- 
ous buildings for very various purposes, and 
in its social organization, will realize that the 
institution is properly named the university. It 
touches all human interests, is concerned with 

Puritans, 1886, pp. 355 sqq. The Fut\ire of the New England 
Churches, 1880, pp. 347 sqq. The Exemption from Taxation, 1874, 
pp. 299 sqq. 

[70] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

the past, the present, and the future, ranges 
through the whole history of letters, sciences, 
arts and professions, and aspires to teach all 
systematized knowledge. More and more, as 
time goes on, and individual and social wealth 
accumulates, it will find itself realizing its 
ideal of yesterday, though still pursuing eagerly 
its ideal for to-morrow."^ 

* University Administration, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Company, 
1908, p. 254. See, for this whole chapter, American Contributions 
to Civilization, New York, The Century Company, 1907. 



VI 



ELIOT S LIFE, PUBLIC ACTIVITIES, PER- 
SONALITY 

Charles William Eliot was born on the 20th 
of March, 1834. His father, Samuel Atkins 
Eliot, was treasurer of Harvard College from 
1842 to 1853. Thus in his early boyhood he 
became, as it were, a member of the college 
household. Besides, as the scion of an old 
and distinguished New England family, he 
belonged to what in Boston, and especially 
outside of Boston, in a tone of mingled irony 
and reverence, is styled the Brahmin caste of 
New England. He studied in Harvard, of 
course. From 1854 to 1858 he served his 
Alma Mater as tutor in Mathematics, and 
from 1858 to 1861 as assistant professor in the 
same science. Then he went over to Chemis- 
try and taught this subject as assistant pro- 
fessor from 1861 to 1863. From then till 1865 
he travelled in Europe, studied Chemistry in 
France, Germany and England and acquainted 
[72] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

himself with the educational methods of these 
countries. It must, however, be acknowledged 
that the general impression of the German 
intellectual life, outside of the strictly scientific 
sphere, can hardly have been deep with him. 
Indeed, it is one of the characteristics of his 
intellectual physiognomy that he remained 
such a stranger to the inner German life. 
Neither his labors nor his thoughts betray a 
touch of Goethe; and what might remind us of 
Kant is but that spirit of rigid Protestantism 
which connects Kant with Puritanism. While 
in Rome, in 1865, he was invited to a highly 
important leading position in one of the great 
industrial establishments of Massachusetts. 
He declined, and accepted instead the far less 
remunerative post of Professor of Analytic 
Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology in Boston. In 1867 he made 
another trip to Europe. Two years later he 
was inaugurated as President of Harvard 
University, with which, except for the last 
few years just previous to his assumption of 
office, he had already been connected all his 
life. 

[73] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

The mighty task of university organization 
fills the next decades. This labor, by itself, 
was in every sense a service to the whole nation. 
But hardly had the new structure assumed 
shape in its essential features when President 
Eliot entered upon a most lively participation 
in all the great political and social questions of 
America, and developed more and more into a 
moving force in the national life of his country. 
In 1890 he became chairman of the Committee 
of Ten, an association made up of leading men 
in all fields of education and engaged in 
elaborating plans of reform and organization 
for the American schools. Its exposition of 
principles and demands was worked out in a 
number of sub-committees and published in a 
comprehensive report. Regular meetings of 
the various branches of the teaching profession 
were called into life. A new spirit now entered 
the schools and brought them more and more 
into unity of organization and purpose; while 
the influential President of Harvard incessantly 
urged the indispensable increase of public 
appropriations. About the same time the 
disputes between capital and labor became 
[74] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

from year to year more threatening. Since 
1902 Eliot has again and again raised his 
voice in protest against this bitter struggle. 
Defying, in his fearless frankness, the tyranny 
of the labor unions, he declared the "scab" 
a modern type of hero, and denounced that 
tyranny as the worst danger to American 
liberty since 1775. But, of course, so far from 
intensifying the quarrel, he worked for a better 
understanding between the warring interests by 
urging them to adjust their differences in 
mutual good will and not to sacrifice the 
common weal to the impossible demands of 
one-sided partisanship. Nowhere was the 
weakness of America's political system so 
glaringly patent as in the misgovernment of its 
cities. Here the very honor of democracy was 
at stakco Eliot appealed to the general interest 
of the people by demonstrating that no one 
suffers worse from municipal misrule than the 
citizen of small income. He advocated admin- 
istration by small commissions of experts with 
long tenure of office, and he inspired the first 
trial of this plan in two New England cities. 
Influenced by one of his sons, and combining 
[ 75 1 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

considerations of beauty with those of public 
health, he again and again called upon the 
cities to lay out municipal parks and gardens as 
breathing-spots for their people. Only last 
year, while the liquor question was such a 
burning Issue in many of the states, President 
Eliot deeply Impressed the country by announc- 
ing, at the age of 74 years, his conversion to 
total abstinence. The people have come to 
expect to hear from President Eliot in every 
great question of American life, and when he 
speaks, America listens. 

The unity of purpose pervading this exten- 
sive activity is easily discovered. The uni- 
versity Is to act as the great storehouse for the 
best intellectual and moral forces in the 
national life. It should be not only the brain, 
but also the ever active conscience of the 
country. In the university the responsibility 
of the whole national life should find its full 
expression. Hence the public activity of the 
university president Is a necessity. Educa- 
tion, so understood, becomes a part of national 
politics in its best sense. The governing 

principles of education grow into ideals of 
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PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

national life. The lofty idealism which owes to 
Eliot its ascendency over all merely utilitarian 
considerations, as the highest maxim of the 
university, has, through this, become the one 
great loadstar of national life. "Truth and 
right are above utility in all realms of thought 
and action." The last and most essential 
element of all worthy education he defines as 
"the steady inculcation of those supreme 
ideals through which the human race is uplifted 
and ennobled, — the ideals of beauty, honor, 
duty and love." It is not merely their service 
to the advancement of this or that profession 
that commends universities. "Their true and 
sufficient ends are knowledge and righteous- 
ness." This is the spirit of his labors as 
president and of his active interest in all 
national problems; and it is through this 
spirit that he has won the reverence of the 
whole country, not merely as the president of 
the greatest university, nor, as has very prettily 
been said, as the president of all American 
universities and schools, but as the great citizen, 
— " the greatest citizen of the United States." 

The life of this good and faithful servant has 
[77] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

not been without its sore afflictions. In the 
very year when he entered upon his great 
office, he buried the beloved wife of his youth, 
Ellen Derby Peabody. New domestic happi- 
ness came to him in his union, since 1877, with 
Grace Mellen Hopkinson. But in 1897 he suf- 
fered another cruel blow in the death, at the age 
of only thirty-seven years, of his son Charles, 
a man of unusual talents, who after thorough 
studies at Harvard had invented for himself the 
profession of landscape gardener, something 
then almost new in America. To this *' lover of 
nature and of his kind, who trained himself for 
a new profession, practised it happily and 
through it wrought much good," the bereaved 
father erected a beautiful monument of paternal 
devotion: a stately volume as a memorial gift 
"for the dear son who died in his bright prime 
from his father." * The artistic sense which 
reveals itself in the charming freshness of his 
descriptions of nature and which found creative 
expression in his professional labors, had come 
to him from his delicate and beautiful mother, 
who, like him, had died so young in years. 

^ Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect, 1902. 
[78] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

But it is the father who is suggested to us by the 
organizing clearness and determination and 
by the truly statesmanlike spirit, with which 
the son attained the realization of the ruling 
idea of his life in the greater public regard to 
the beauty of cities and towns. Thus he added 
to the happiness of his people and to the refine- 
ment of their joy in life. Indeed, it would 
almost seem to us as if the ideals of the son 
were reaching out beyond those of the father to 
a still later phase of American development. 
For the America of beauty must come after the 
America of the mind, just as this must succeed 
to the America of wealth and power. 

Of unusually tall, slender, erect stature, Eliot 
has still, at the age of seventy-five years, the mus- 
cular bearing of a youth, without the slightest 
suggestion of infirmity. In his undiminished 
vigor and clearness of mind he can still cope 
with the youngest of his staff. Only recently, 
in the closing months of his career as president, 
he has undertaken two most extensive trips to 
the West and the South, frequently travelling 
all night, and delivering addresses every day, 

in order to win, by the appeal of living speech, 
[79] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

new supporters for the Harvard idea. Now 
that he is about to retire from his oflfice, no- 
body is suggesting the idea of a well-earned 
rest. The only question is to which field of 
public activity he will from now on devote his 
labors. 

Eliot's life has been a life of struggle. In 
the first decades of his presidency of Harvard 
he had to overcome the united resistance of all 
adherents of tradition. By his fearless frank- 
ness of speech he has again and again given 
offence, now to one, now to another class of 
people. Indeed, there were those who would 
see in him only a ruthless autocrat. Further- 
more, with the increasing extension of the 
University, he held himself more and more 
aloof from contact with the actual life of its 
students. The traditional patriarchic rela- 
tion between president and students came to 
an end. He was not the father confessor, but 
the statesman of Harvard; not, as it has been 
well put, its Secretary of the Interior, but its 
Secretary of Foreign Affairs. But soon the 
absolute unselfishness of his policy became 

apparent. It was seen how sincerely he relied 
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PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

on the most general and detailed discussion to 
clarify matters, and how gladly he acknow- 
ledged the work done by his large staff of co- 
workers, how unreservedly he executed majority 
decisions even when he was at variance with 
them. Then there was the growing admira- 
tion for his amazing power of work. A per- 
manent secretary actually had to be forced upon 
him; he would have much preferred to do 
everything alone. The student body gradu- 
ally came to take deep pride in their president. 
Nobody could resist that revelation of truest 
nobility and kindness when, more than thirty 
years ago, a student was taken with small-pox, 
was refused admission by every hospital, and 
President Eliot removed his own family to 
receive the afflicted man into his home. No- 
body but knew how secure at all times the 
honor of Harvard was in President Eliot's 
keeping. Who could forget that recent ex- 
change of telegrams between him and President 
Roosevelt! Two students, members of the 
two university boat crews which were just then 
making ready for the annual contest with 

Yale, had been suspended for a serious viola- 
[81 ] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

tlon of the University rules, and this dropped 
them from their crews almost on the eve of 
the race. The victory over Yale, until then 
joyfully and confidently expected, was put in 
question. An extraordinary excitement took 
hold of alumni and students, and turned against 
Eliot. Then President Roosevelt and First 
Assistant Secretary of State Bacon, both of 
them loyal Harvard men, telegraphed to Eliot 
expressing their astonishment at the severity 
of the punishment and asking him to modify 
it so as to permit the men to row. Eliot 
telegraphically declined the request, "since 
the finest sense of honor was the best fruit of 
college education, and since both men did a 
dishonorable thing." Now that hostile atti- 
tude was reversed into gratitude to the man of 
unflinching courage. As the student paper, 
the "Crimson," declared on Eliot's seventieth 
birthday, "we are proud of him and glad of 
him, and to him we accord the reverence that 
even the worst of us in his heart feels for the 
good and great." Let us add to this a quota- 
tion from that address of Harvard men he 

received on the same day: "Your outward 
[82] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

reserve has concealed a heart more tender than 
you have trusted yourself to reveal. Defeat 
of your cherished plans has disclosed your 
patience and magnanimity and your willing- 
ness to bide your time. Fearless, just and 
wise, of deep and simple faith, serene in 
affliction, self-restrained in success, unaffected 
by any manner of self-interest, you command 
the admiration of all men and the gratitude 
and loyalty of the sons of Harvard." Some 
of the objections to Eliot's policies will remain 
and perhaps assert themselves in the further 
history of the University. But what bitter 
feeling against him once existed has long since 
been changed to reverence and unbounded 
confidence. Eliot once said: *' Better than 
devotion to an idealized person is devotion to 
a personified ideal.'* The "Harvard Bulletin," 
an alumni publication, applied these words to 
Eliot himself and called him the personified 
ideal of the American university. 

Eliot does not rank with the world's greatest 
thinkers ; he does not rank with those who, like 
Plato, like Kant, like Goethe, command their 

word to a thousand generations. He has not 

[83] 



CHARLES W. ELIOT 

conjured up from unfathomable depths new 
well-springs of life for mankind. He belongs 
essentially to America. Endowed with a most 
rational mind and with invincible energy, he 
has accomplished the evolution of Harvard into 
a genuine university in the European sense, 
while, at the same time, ever remaining true 
to his conception of education as a service to 
the whole people. He has created the atmos- 
phere in which genuine scholarship can thrive 
upon American soil. He has put upon edu- 
cation the stamp of democracy. The former 
achievement was an adaptation to standards 
originating in other lands ; the latter was wholly 
his own in origin and accomplishment. 
Whether his form of education will remain 
victorious in America only the future can 
reveal. But nothing can dislodge Eliot from 
his place in American history as the great 
statesman of American pedagogics, who, as the 
educator of his nation, has expressed in edu- 
cation the ideal of his people, the ideal of 
democracy. 

If we now ask ourselves on what, ultimately, 
the confidence in Eliot, his place among his 
[ 84 ] 



PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

people and his success rest, we must say it is 
his incessant striving for the good, it is the 
moral force he represents. Thus, then, he 
himself stands before us as one of those types 
which are the self-justification of democracy 
in its ideal conception as that form of society 
in which the forces voluntarily and of their 
own direction combine in mutual service and 
thus produce the living organism of society. 
Without federal or state office, he has been a 
force in national life wholly and only through 
the moral power which he represents. And, 
perhaps, this is the highest glory of America 
that here, probably more than anywhere, it 
is only the purely moral forces that gain the 
people's confidence, and command success. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



MAY 17 tsn^ 



